IP based conference servers are typically referred to as IP media servers which are employed in telephony networks. IP media servers perform a variety of basic and enhanced services which include conferencing, audio and video interactive voice response (IVR), transcoding, audio and video announcements, and other advanced speech services. IP media servers may also be employed in networks which provide video conferencing services, as well as typical data exchange services of the sort which occurs over the Internet, over virtual private networks, within wide area networks and local area networks, and the like. Data exchange and processing performed by the media server is based on packet processing with fixed maximum processing time requirements.
IP multimedia conferencing servers allow a number of participants to join a conference. A conference service generally requires the mixing of participants' media by a mixer resource, allowing all participants to hear and/or see other participants as they become active during the conference. The conference mixer resource generally requires media from all participants to determine which participants will be heard or seen during conference operation as active participants. The set of active participants can dynamically change in real-time as a given participant stops contributing while another participant starts contributing.